A positive quality of life during the 21st century has been the rapid dissolution of longstanding cultural divisions. With increasing frequency, the notion of duality itself is giving way to more fluid reflections of identity in human interaction and artistic expression. No album highlights this quite like
Rosalía's
Motomami. Even its binominal title celebrates this duality: "Moto" refers to the primal side of femininity, while "mami" reflects a gentler, earthier maternal aspect. This record, using many producers, offers the expression, appearance, and explosion of binaries in contrasting energies.
Motomami is at once jarring, jagged, dissonant, experimental, yet sweet, tender, nurturing, and celebratory; it embodies these contradictions without trying to create a harmonious whole. The aesthetic (not stylistic) peers of this release include the
Beastie Boys'
Ill Communication,
Café Tacuba's Revés/Yo Soy,
Moby's Play,
Björk's
Volta, and Mexican Institute of Sound's Politico.
Rosalía ranges across genres -- stripping, appending, and juxtaposing them in conflicting ways, from reggaeton, flamenco, cumbia, trap, and hip-hop to electro, indie, jazz, and more.
"Saoko" is a sound clash of reggaeton and electro with a rapped lyric about radical transformation. The bridge offers an avant-jazz piano breakdown before colliding rhythms return to surround her. "Candy" begins a cappella with
Rosalía using the discipline of flamenco to roll the syllables around in her mouth before letting them drip out amid crisscrossing reggaeton beats and a driving sample from
Burial's "Arcangel." "La Fama," a duet with
the Weeknd, offers his lithe, emotionally pleading voice in an electro-cumbia structure; it is sensually humid and loopy. On "Bulerías,"
Rosalía returns to hardcore flamenco, but updates it. Traditionally syncopated handclaps are displaced temporarily by layered beats and atmospheric synths, as a male chorus registers chanted assent. Organic handclaps replace synthetic beats to claim the center as the singers' subtly manipulated voices join together in power. On "Hentai," a raunchy romantic ballad offers
Rosalía's warm, studied vibrato transformed via electronica into an alien one with robotic inflection. Its final 40 seconds erupt in zippered beats that add weight to its erotic expression. "Diablo" commences with a flamenco melody and delicate piano before industrial-strength reggaeton beats explode upfront as she sings about God and material corruption.
Rosalía channels opera in "Delirio de Grandeza" atop jazzy son and bolero in an homage to Caribbean salsa. The production juxtaposes fragments from Cuban crooner
Justo Betancourt's 1968 romantic single of the same title to a sampled verse from "Delirious" by
Soulja Boy.
Rosalía's emotionally authoritative vocal on the dolorous electric piano closing track, "Sakura," sounds like it was recorded live in an arena. Her control -- especially of her falsetto -- is canny as she compares her time as a pop star to the brief life of a cherry blossom.
Motomami is as provocative and risky as it is creative. It showcases
Rosalía as a master, twisting together the contradictory strands of Latin and Anglo pop with traditional and vanguard forms and fresh sounds into a gloriously articulated radical approach that makes for obsessive listening. ~ Thom Jurek